About “To All the Girls”

On the opening cut, the Beastie Boys put some distance between the less-respectful lyrics they kicked on License to Ill (and tracks like, “She’s on It“) vs. their maturing self-awareness. As per Beastiemania, on the 2009 audio commentary for the Paul’s Boutique — 20th Anniversary Edition, MCA explains: "We had been kicking around the idea for a while of doing some kind of dedication thing, and we were talking about it when we were with the Dust Brothers. And I think Matt Dike said, ‘Oh, I got the perfect piece of music’ and then he went over and dropped the needle on this [‘Loran’s Dance’ by Idris Muhammad] and we were like ‘yeeaahh.’”http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL7311151EFFEE19DA&feature=player_detailpage&v=WZbE2VvZCqk

This could be the Beastie Boys' response to Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson’s To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before

In his 33 1/3 Series book, Paul’s Boutique, (2006)…

…Dan LeRoy writes: “[To All the Girls] says something about the complexities of Paul’s Boutique – or at least, something about its creators' penchant for pranks – that even some of the slightest tracks have back stories worth recounting. One example is [this track], an apparently straightforward creation. Over a moody introduction to jazz drummer Idris Muhammed’s 1974 song ‘Loran’s Dance,’ Adam Yauch murmurs a dedication to women all over the world, his simple lyrics buoyed by clouds of electric piano from keyboardist Bob James.”

“There were these massive speakers, and everyone at Masterdisk was so proud of this room. And sure enough, the song worked like a charm: The record starts, the engineer could barely hear it, he turns it up, you could still barely hear it – he turns it up more…BOOM! The bass note kicks in, and tiles fall from the ceiling. It was incredible.” (Mike Simpson)